Latham denies copying Clinton's speech

Opposition leader Mark Latham today denied he had plagiarised a speech by former United States president Bill Clinton, after Liberal frontbencher Tony Abbott yesterday accused him of doing so.

A speech Mr Latham delivered to a Global Foundation lunch in Sydney on Tuesday, setting proposed national targets for learning, showed similarities to Mr Clinton's State of the Union address in 1997, the government has said.

But Mr Latham today denied his speech was the same.

"My targets are more ambitious and broader than the ones Bill Clinton outlined in 1997," Mr Latham told Adelaide radio station 5AA.

"I've got seven targets set out in my program, I think he had just three and one of those is more moderate than mine - I want computer literacy at age 10, he was talking about age 12.

"I've been talking that way for many years about these targets.

"How do you express it? If you want every five-year-old to be able to read [then] you've got to say it that way.